Enticement (11 page)

“I’m at work.”

“Um, don’t you finish at two?” He lifted his wrist and glanced between his watch and the clock on the wall counting down the last forty seconds of the hour. “There, you’re finished. So, name your location, lady, and I’ll chauffeur you over there.”

“Home,” she muttered, dubious about being seen in public with Kit considering the rumours Lillianna was probably spreading even as they spoke. Lilli knew everyone and she was the gossip queen, particularly if it was a nice fat juicy bit of scandal or involved an attractive bloke. By the end of the day, once the Chinese Whispers had gone around the village a few times, it’d probably be widely regarded that she was carrying twins with two fathers and that she and Ross regularly hosted orgies in their shed, or worse, although, she couldn’t actually envisage much worse. Having it put about that they had a live-in lover seemed bad enough.

“I’m not taking you home. Pick somewhere else. Somewhere that actually serves food and has a wine menu.”

“There’s the Black Bull,” she muttered dubiously.

“At Thirl?’

“Yeah.” The next village over seemed like a safe enough choice. Although only five miles down the road, there wasn’t much to-ing and fro-ing between the two communities, so hopefully them being out for dinner sans Ross would pass un-remarked upon. It was unlikely she’d even be recognized. “I just need to get Josie to take over serving.” She stripped off her frilly Edwardian style apron and hung it on a peg inside the store cupboard. “She’s probably parked in front of the fire in the morning room. And I can’t be long. I’m not actually finished. There’s a planning meeting for the Spring Bazaar at four.”

“Two hours should be plenty,” Kit said with a worrying glint in his eyes.

Chapter Six

Kit pulled off the dressing on his brow on the way over to Thirl in the car. To be fair, he did look better without it, and the wound itself didn’t look too bad, just as if someone had drawn a second brow above the first with a crimson lip-liner. It might even look sexy once it was no longer matted with glue and had turned silver.

The Black Bull was boarded up when they got there with a large “Rent this Pub” sign prominently displayed on the roadside. They parked up regardless and strolled into the centre of the cobbled village planning to resort to fish and chips. In the end the only place open was a specialty coffee and ice-cream parlour with a selection of cast iron furniture in a sheltered courtyard out back. The place was deserted. Evie sat under an ivy-strung arbour shivering with her hands stuffed inside her pockets. “I bet you have to fight for a seat in the summer.”

“What’ll you have?” Kit asked, glancing at the menu. He wasn’t shivering, but the tips of his fingers did look cold. “I was thinking hot chocolate and marshmallows. Ice cream might be a bit hard on the stomach.”

“Was that snow?” Evie rubbed at a cold droplet that had just hit her nose and glanced suspiciously up at heavily clouded sky. “I think it was. I’m not sure this is a good choice. Let’s get some drinks and go back to the car with them. I’m not bothered about lunch. I normally skip it anyway.”

“Okay, I can go with that.” Kit pushed himself up again. “Although, I have to say, I’ve never known taking a woman out for lunch to be so difficult.”

Laden with steaming beverages, and several bags of tortilla chips, they traipsed back to the car. Evie, content to be inside with the heating on, was happy to stay in the car park, but Kit was having none of it. He drove them back along the narrow winding lane with its parallel dry-stone walls on either side and parked up in a lay-by overlooking a vast rolling swell of the moors that reminded Evie of a beloved threadbare rug.

The sky above was white, with only the faintest hint of blue on the very edge of the horizon. As the last purr of the engine died away, the first flurry of snow softly pattered against the windscreen and stuck, obscuring the view with a crystalline lattice work.

Evie cradled her drink, warming her hands through the corrugated cardboard as she watched Kit flip the lid off his chocolate and fish the marshmallows out with his fingers. He held one between his forefinger and thumb, and curled his tongue around the sticky white blob, before popping it into his mouth to savour. A dribble of chocolate ran down his chin.

“I guess you know Lillianna,” she said, offering him a tissue.

Kit looked nonplussed at the tissue, and wiped the drip away with the back of his hand. “Not really. No more than anyone else in Kirkley.”

“Oh! I just thought from her reaction that you must have known one another pretty well. Like you’d gone out or something.”

That earned a hurried shake of the head and a scowl of distaste. “Not my type. I don’t do smokers.”

“Right.” Evie sagged a little deeper into the passenger seat, wishing now that she’d pressed Lillianna a little harder for information. Obviously, she knew something about Kit’s past life in Kirkley, before he’d trotted off to Japan to work in whatever dubious trade he’d been part of, and she felt she could use a bit of insight into how his mind worked. Something told her there was more to him being here than Ross suggesting they get better acquainted. Actually, she wasn’t sure Ross would have made that suggestion at all. He’d been slightly twitchy all week about her interest in Kit. But curiosity was natural, and the guy was staying in their house. She dug out her phone and started tapping out a message.

“What are you doing? Put that away.”

“I thought I’d warn Ross about what’s coming.”

“Why?”

Evie frowned. Wasn’t that obvious? “’Cause he might get a bit upset if people start hinting that we’re having an affair behind his back.”

“But we’re not,” Kit said bluntly, leaving her with the distinct impression that his words didn’t mean precisely what they seemed at first glance.

He undid his seatbelt and took the phone off her, slipping it into the glove compartment. “Don’t waste your time on theatrics. I think Ross’ll manage to handle any chaff that gets thrown his way.”

Evie remained unconvinced. If their situations were reversed, she’d be livid if she caught wind of rumours about Ross having an affair, particularly with one of her oldest friends. Then again, she was far more easily wound up than Ross, who mostly let things blow past him like autumn leaves in the wind. Maybe he’d trust them and ignore the circulating nonsense.

“Kit, why did you leave Kirkley? I’ve been wondering, and Lillianna said…”

“Surprised it’s taken you all week to ask.” He tilted his head to one side in order to look at her, and his dark fringe fell over his face so that it shrouded his left eye. “I had to. Didn’t have any choice. I wasn’t welcome anymore, and my presence wasn’t doing Ross any favours. I didn’t want to get him tarnished by association.”

“Not welcome? In what sense?”

“In every sense, Evie.” His dark eyes bore into her and yet revealed nothing beside a hint of cold lingering anger over the injustice of it all.

“I don’t get it. Tarnished him how?”

Kit shrugged and drained his cup, which he crushed within his hand and chucked into the back. “Just stuff. It happens and people form opinions, and then it doesn’t matter what the truth is, because you’re already damned.”

“Hence the implications that you’re the devil incarnate?”

“Is that the current consensus?”

Evie shook her head. “Lillianna’s description, no one else’s. She said you were a bad, bad boy.”

Suddenly a spark lit in his devil’s eyes and he glanced at her from under his brows and long fringe. “No, Evie. I’m a bad, bad man. Not a boy.” He placed his hand upon her thigh. “Want to find out how bad? It’ll make your toes curl.”

Her toes were already curled, a combination of the rapidly drifting snow outside and the heat suddenly surging through her midriff in response to his touch. Shit! This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t allowed to be happening, and yet his palm print seemed to be seared into her thigh. What the hell was going on? Where had this come from? One minute they were talking and agreeing that nothing was going on that Ross needed to worry about, and the next he was getting all touchy-feely and husky voiced.

Kit fanned out his fingers and then dipped them down between her legs.

Terrified and squeamishly aroused, she jumped as much as the belt and the back support would allow, which was only a matter of centimetres and clamped her legs together, unwittingly trapping his fingers.

“Nice and warm in here,” he mused, wiggling his fingers. His grin stretched, seductively broad. “We’re getting a bit steamed up.”

Condensation now coated the inside of the windows while snow flakes peppered the outer. Evie’s skin felt similarly dotted with perspiration as hot need sent prickles running up and down her throat. It made her breasts tingle and her abdomen swell with the rush of blood. Don’t move that hand, don’t move it, she repeated, mantra-like in her head, while a second devil’s voice coaxed in a sultry whisper for him to do exactly that, and more, to press his thumb up against her willing slit.

Damn him. Damn everything. He made her want to do the wildest, craziest things. She fancied him. Okay, she admitted it. Had from that first moment she’d seen him in the shower, but that didn’t excuse her behaviour. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t getting any, nor that her relationship with Ross sucked in any other way. At least if that had been true playing away from home might have been justifiable. But it wasn’t, and she wasn’t going to. She was going to stop this rampant nonsense, right now. She wasn’t sacrificing happy ever after with a mortgage and a houseful of pets for a stealthy grope from Mr. Bad Man.

“Kit!” she croaked, intending to sound commanding, not like a frog with a sore throat.

To her dismay, instead of being put off by her warning, he made an ungainly exit out of the driver’s seat and clambered over the gear stick to straddle her lap. “Yes-ss.”

“What are you doing? Get off me. You’re not proving anything besides how irresponsible you are.”

Kit grasped her hands, folding his fingers around hers so that their palms lay pressed together at her shoulder height.

“May as well be damned as a sinner than as a saint.” He leaned a little closer, so that their loins slid closer together.

Pinned by his weight, the seat belt and the clasp of his palms, Evie stared at him unblinking, unable to turn away from the intensity of his gaze, or the seductive promise of his parted lips. Ever since that night when she’d dreamed about Kit fucking her while Ross lay beside them asleep, her libido had been haywire. She and Ross had been going at it like bunnies every night, until they collapsed into exhausted, dreamless sleep. The dream hadn’t recurred, but she’d re-imagined it during idle moments at work, reworking the scenario so that Ross was awake and watching them, and another time an active participant in their lovemaking, taking her as he and Kit had taken that girl in the tent years ago.

“Kit. Don’t,” she bleated, their lips almost touching.

His breath caressed her face as he spoke. “Is that your best defence?” He raised an eyebrow and winced as the movement tugged at his wound. “That’s hardly an encouragement to stop. It’s barely protest enough to stop you feeling guilty.”

“I love him.”

The soft whisper of his breaths tickled. “So do I.” There wasn’t enough time to think about that. He pecked her upon the cheek, in the quickest, most chaste manner she’d experienced since kissing the vicar on Christmas Eve, his lips barely brushing her skin. Then he opened the car door and got out.

Relief flooded Evie’s chest, followed immediately by a wave of regret. She starred numbly at his retreating back as he strode away from the car, head down, facing the wind. Fighting with the belt, her sex still liquid with arousal, she leaned out of the door. “Hey! Where are you going?”

“Home,” he called, not turning. Having reached the dry-stone wall, he nimbly leapt over.

“What? Get in the car, Kit.” Face screwed up against the biting wind and the patter of wet snow, Evie pitched after him. “What the fuck has got into you? Is this some sort of bollocks game? ’Cause if it is, quit pratting about, it’s bloody freezing.”

He stopped and slowly turned to face her, his shaggy hair blowing around him and his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. “Here, take the keys.” He threw them so that they landed forming an indent in the settling snow. “Drive back to work. I can walk home from here.”

“You can drive back from here.” Leaving the keys where they’d landed, she slowly approached. “I’m not leaving you out here in the snow. Ross would never forgive me.” Cautiously, she straddled the wall.

Kit remained stock still, watching her, his face in shadow. “He might not appreciate you being in the car with me either.”

“Don’t play games, Kit. This is a game, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he said darkly.

“So, what’s the purpose of it?”

“To see what makes you tick. To turn you on.”

“Freezing doesn’t turn me on.” She scooped a handful of wet snow from the wall and chucked it him. The crude snowball splattered across the front of his jacket. Kit’s smile merely thinned, becoming tightly pursed and brooding, if not quite menacing.

“So, what does?”

Her gaze flickered down to his loins.

Kit laughed. “Oh, right, that. You really get off on that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. So, what if I do?” Humouring him seemed the best way to get him back in the car. Not that he showed any signs of moving in that direction. Evie tentatively lowered herself down from the wall. The drop was considerably farther on this side of the boundary, and the grass sloped downwards at a steep incline. One wrong foot and she’d go skiing into him on her bum.

“I once fucked a snowman,” he said.

“The hell you did.”

“It’s true.” His gaze rose heavenwards. “Fucking cold. Fucking stupid.”

Evie reached him and placed her hand gently upon his arm, not convinced his curses were linked to his confession. There was something going on here that she couldn’t quite figure. His lip quivered slightly as he glanced down at her before turning his head to the sky again. “Fucking Kirkley,” he muttered. The low sloped roofs of the village cottages could just be seen from here, huddled together in the valley basin.

“Kit, what happened?” She wasn’t sure if she was asking about the injury to his brow, or some event from the distant past; either way, he trembled when she wrapped her arms around him and drew him into her embrace.

He remained curiously stiff as she embraced him, not the hot, sensual creature she’d grown used to.

“I couldn’t stay away any longer,” he said, speaking as if to some invisible onlooker. “I realized I’d been running for too long. That people had a right to closure.”

“Running from what? From Ross?”

“We’re fucking lovers, Evie. There’s no running from him anymore.”

That was another smart arse wisecrack, the twitch of his cheek, which formed into a dimple proved it. Evie dug a finger into his ribs. “That’s not funny, Kit.”